Secret gardens
Venice’s hidden gardens have inspired Renaissance painters and provided a haven for writers through the centuries. Now, a lavish new book lets everyone luxuriate in their delights Words: Joanna Hunter Photographs: Marianne Majerus VENICE: A CITY SO famous that you can picture the canals in your mind’s eye as soon as you hear its name. [...]
Venice’s hidden gardens have inspired Renaissance
painters and provided a haven for writers through the centuries. Now, a lavish
new book lets everyone luxuriate in their delights
Words: Joanna Hunter
Photographs: Marianne Majerus
VENICE: A CITY SO famous that you can picture the
canals in your mind’s eye as soon as you hear its name.
Even if you haven’t been there, you feel you know
it already: the lagoons and the bridges, the pigeons
feeding on St Mark’s Square, the gondolas being deftly
manoeuvred along its canals. Nonetheless, chances are
that when you think of La Serenissima (as the Venetians
proudly call their city) and all its many charms, there is
a surprising aspect not to be overlooked – its gardens.
The city boasts 118 islands, 410 bridges – and more than 500 gardens. Some are open to the public but most
are hidden away; beautiful secrets, inaccessible to all but a privileged few. That is until Mariagrazia Dammicco and
Marianne Majerus put together the lush tome Venetian Gardens – a book that promises to lead you up the garden path (in the nicest way that you can possibly imagine, of course) and beyond.
Within the breathtaking pages of the coffee-table
publication lie photographs and descriptions of gardens
at palazzos (palaces) once lived in by doges (elected
political leaders and chief magistrates of the Republic
of Venice who governed up until the end of the 18th
century). These gardens have proved fragrant backdrops
for parties, dances and literary gatherings; for public
pleasure and private pacts, as well as for feasting on the
local Italian delicacies. And, in a city where space is scant
and besieged by saltwater and high tides, the garden is
a symbol of the ultimate in perseverance – as well as
luxury and indulgence.
The book is separated into categories that include
aristocratic, artistic and intimate gardens, as well as
gardens of the soul, gardens on the larger islands, and
ones between sky and water (sublime terrace gardens).
Its author tells us how the city’s plots are as varied as they are numerous. “Each garden spoke to me with
a particular emotion,” writes Mariagrazia Dammicco, also a member of Venice’s historic gardens club. “When
I enter, when I walk, when I talk with the owner… I have tried to make these emotions live for the readers too.”
Linger over the Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo garden
at Cannaregio, which was famed in the 16th and 17th
centuries for the intellectual gatherings held there. They
were attended by the infamous playwright, author, poet
and satirist Pietro Aretino and his friend, the Renaissance
painter Titian (renowned for his idealised images of
redheaded, voluptuous beauties). Or delight over the
sculpture garden at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in Dorsoduro, whose
traditional design is interspersed with contemporary
elements like blue neon words hanging on greeneryclad
stone walls. Enter into the ancient courtyard
at the Galleria “Giorgio Franchetti” in the Ca’ d’Oro,
Cannaregio, or be inspired by the mix of Moorish, Gothic,
Alpine and Japanese influences at the Albergo Quattro
Fontane garden at the Lido di Venezia resort.
For the book’s photographer, Marianne Majerus, it
wasn’t just the gardens’ physical beauty alone that
made them memorable but also discovering the people
that made them that way. “One of the pleasures of
photographing these amazing gardens was meeting their
owners without whose generosity the book would not
have been possible,” she says. “Among them, I met Bente
Bevilacqua who has a charming hotel, Albergo al Quattro
Fontane, on the Lido. She has created a wonderful garden
with an arts and crafts feel for her guests to enjoy.”
Although most of the gardens are closed to the public,
the Wigwam Club Giardini Storici Venezia, founded by
Mariagrazia Dammicco and fellow garden lovers, holds
an annual programme of garden visits and can also
arrange group visits on request.
Venetian Gardens by Mariagrazia Dammicco and
Marianne Majerus (Flammarion, £24.95); for
information on Wigwam Club Giardini Storici Venezia,
visit www.giardini-venezia.it (Italian only)
